Each year, June 23 marks World Whistleblower Day – an occasion that highlights the importance of whistleblowers in fighting corruption, along with ways to support these brave individuals.
We’ve long extolled the strategic value of a “speak up culture,” and if you work in ethics and compliance, you’re probably already aware of what a meaningful impact whistleblowers can have on your risk visibility, reputation management, and regulatory compliance. But the key component in building that culture is establishing trust in your whistleblower hotline – and actively supporting whistleblowers is the first, and most important, step in establishing that trust.
How do you support them? Ultimately, whistleblowers feeling supported is a cultural issue that must permeate the entire organization – but it starts with the ethics and compliance team. There are a few best practices that you can start with, the most important of which is preventing retaliation.
How to support and protect whistleblowers
- Make whistleblowing easy
- Help whistleblowers overcome fear of the unknown
- Provide whistleblower recognition
- Prevent whistleblower retaliation
- Follow up with whistleblowers
- Measure speak-up rates and retaliation across the organization
Keep reading for more details on how to approach each of these best practices.
Make whistleblowing easy
The choice to blow the whistle can be the most challenging moment in a person’s entire career. It’s hard enough to gather the courage to submit a report – but if you make the whistleblowing process as straightforward as possible, you can remove the anxiety and frustration that may prevent whistleblowers from finishing what they started.
1. Provide multiple intake channels
Not every employee has access to a computer during their workday. Not every whistleblower will feel comfortable submitting a report to their boss, while some whistleblowers prefer to submit a report to a familiar face. By allowing whistleblowers to submit reports online, over the phone to an agent, or in person to their manager – or even via text – you lower the barrier to entry and ease the first step in what can appear to be an arduous process.
2. Provide anonymity options
Enabling anonymous reports is a key requirement in some countries. Regardless of whether your local regulatory body requires anonymity, providing the option to report anonymously is a best practice.
3. Let the whistleblower dictate their follow-up communication
While some whistleblowers may wish to submit a report and move on with their lives, others may want to know what happens next. If they never hear back, they may wonder whether they went to all that effort for nothing. Allowing the whistleblower to opt-in to follow-up communications – whether they’ve remained anonymous or not—puts the choice in their hands.
Help whistleblowers overcome fear of the unknown
The unknown can be scary. Most whistleblowers are submitting a report for the first time and may have no idea what to expect – unless you’ve proactively educated your workforce.
1. Run awareness campaigns where whistleblowers are lauded
Perhaps the most frightening aspect of submitting a whistleblower report can be the sense that the whistleblower is “going up against the company” without knowing what happens next. Pre-empt that fear by sharing anonymized stories of substantiated reports – how and why the report was submitted, what the investigation process was like, and how grateful the company is to the whistleblower for helping them spot an issue before it got any worse.
2. Help potential whistleblowers “practice” submitting reports with a competition
Some OneTrust Helpline customers have had success launching their helplines with a competition that invites employees to submit a simple report; everyone who participates and submits their report is entered in a drawing for a prize. They gain familiarity with the reporting process, step-by-step, and can spread the word about their experience.
Provide whistleblower recognition – on a personal level and on an anonymized, “public” level
When you take the time to recognize whistleblowers, you show them that they’re supported and appreciated. This can take several different forms:
1. Provide monetary compensation
The United States federal government provides monetary rewards to whistleblowers through a variety of different programs, but some companies attempt to pre-empt external whistleblowing by rewarding their own whistleblowers internally. These can be small monetary bonuses or large rewards.
2. Write a personal note
Money isn’t the only way to show appreciation and recognize value. As pointed out by Dr. Pat Harned, CEO of the Ethics and Compliance Initiative, during Convercent’s 2021 Global Forum, a personal note from a senior-level leader (like the CEO) thanking the whistleblower for their courage in helping the company solve a problem can go a long way toward expressing the company’s gratitude.
3. Share real-life whistleblowing stories across the organization
When you share stories of substantiated reports with the entire workforce, you demonstrate the importance of whistleblowing and the way you value whistleblowers to potential future whistleblowers. This ensures that should the occasion arise when they feel compelled to submit a report, they know that the process is fair, and they’ll be supported.
Prevent whistleblower retaliation
As OneTrust CECO, Asha Palmer, said at our TrustWeek panel on anti-retaliation, “You can’t build trust in a whistleblowing platform without solving for the retaliation problem.”
Unfortunately, retaliation is at an all-time high, according to ECI’s most recent Global Business Ethics Survey: 61 percent of employees who observed some sort of wrongdoing and reported it internally experienced retaliation for having done so.
Anti-retaliation measures are now more important than ever. It may seem impossible to track retaliation when so much of it takes place offline, let alone prevent it from happening—but it is possible, and it’s essential that compliance teams undertake the effort.
1. Have an anti-retaliation policy and run awareness campaigns for it
An anti-retaliation policy is the bare minimum. Ensure that your stance on retaliation is encoded in official company policy, and accessible to all employees on your company intranet or ethics portal. Then, make sure that everyone knows about it. You may already run awareness campaigns for your hotline. Supplement those campaigns with specific messaging on your anti-retaliation policy so that everyone – from senior leadership to the most junior employee – knows what’s expected of them.
2. Run proactive training on trauma-informed investigations
When a whistleblower submits their report directly to a manager, perception of retaliation can begin at that very moment depending on how the report is received. And that perception can continue to be strengthened during the investigation. That’s why it’s essential that managers and investigators are trained to recognize whistleblowing as a potentially traumatic event and handle their response accordingly.
Follow up with whistleblowers
A pay raise withheld, a promotion withdrawn, a whistleblower being ostracized by colleagues – all of these things are examples of retaliation. Both overt and subtle actions taken against a whistleblower can derail their career or cause emotional distress. Identifying potential acts of retaliation requires you to periodically review data and follow up with whistleblowers.
Here are some steps you can take:
1. Identify your own markers, whether it’s pay raises, bonuses, relocations, or performance review scores. Ideally, some markers can be measured using HR data; others will require a high-touch approach and may not be possible with anonymous whistleblowers.
2. Implement a check-in timeline; for example, check in within a month, three months, six months, and a year.
3. Establish a “normal range” for each marker and make note of any markers that fall outside the range. Is there a business justification for the exception?
4. Ask the right questions, because in many cases whistleblowers will withhold information regarding retaliation or avoid follow-up because they want their situation to end.
Crucially in Europe, tracking such markers will enable you to comply with the EU Whistleblower Protection Directive. The Directive requires a reverse burden of proof – companies must prove that no retaliation has taken place because of a report, rather than the whistleblower proving that retaliation has taken place. For more on the requirements that European companies are faced with, download our Quick Guide to the EU Whistleblower Directive.
Measure speak-up rates and retaliation across the organization
Finally, track whether your whistleblower support is having an impact. Measure your reporting rates, substantiation rates, and instances of retaliation moving forward. You can benchmark your own results using a benchmarking tool like OneTrust’s, or compare your results to the numbers in ECI’s Global Business Ethics Survey.
Looking to bolster your speak-up culture? Download the ebook to learn how.
